


artem musicam

by Balthuza, Liryczna



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 03:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16905450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balthuza/pseuds/Balthuza, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liryczna/pseuds/Liryczna
Summary: music is a connection





	1. elven

Var

The old lullabies come to him easily like breathing, and even when he’s half dead on his feet they flow from his tongue like honey.

Some nights Var hums to lull himself to sleep, and sometimes he sings to keep himself awake.

When he sings during the day his voice is loud like a bell, navigating the words which meanings he only half knows.

* * *

 

Solas

He doesn’t remember the songs they used to sing. His voice fractures and breaks as he tries to navigate the memories that seem lost. The fade holds no answer, staying silent no matter how hard he listens.

 

 


	2. dark

Hespith

Hespith can taste the song in her blood, the calling she resist only through her broken heart, and the anger born from disappointment. She remembers the fire in Branka’s eyes when she watched her weave songs and draw them into shapes on her skin.

She remembers the time when the melodies in her head were a gift, not a curse.

* * *

 

Ruck

Ruck doesn’t want to remember the songs, but they keep coming back, like the memories of gentle hands and soft voice. He wants the quiet, but the songs just come and come, and come, and they keep drowning out the song of the darkness. 


	3. circle

Evelina

She can’t remember the last time she wanted to sing. There’s always too much to do, always a child going hungry. The templars, the templars are the worst. 

Forced to choose between the silence of the Circle and the siren song of the other side, for the first time in her life Eveline grows desperate enough to hum the forbidden song.

* * *

 

Steven

For years, Kinloch Hold is his home. The familiar steps feel like dancing, on a good day, and when he is sure the Knight Commander will not suddenly appear in the door he sings the old songs he still remembers in his father’s voice. On a bad day he hums the ones his mother sung, soft and quiet, refusing to let them be forgotten.

He tries to keep his voice down when singing the Chant, his voice too rough and gruff to give it any justice.

*

Leaving Kinloch Hold is bittersweet. He knows it may be a coward’s way out, but he did all he could. He cannot change the world, apparently he cannot even change the place he spend half of his life in. Still, at least he will no longer have a hand in something like this (the hungry eyes of the mage haunt him in his dreams, the flat monotone singing a verse over and over sends goosebumps over his skin), and neither will those who did it in the first place.

Leaving Kinloch it is bittersweet. He won’t can’t stay in the walls tainted by cruelty of those he thought his brothers, but at the very least neither can they, the Knight Commander made it clear. Thoreau, Pero, Copper. None of them deserving to carry the sword they were handed.

For ones like them the burn of lyrium song silenced is far less than they deserve.

*

It was a long time since Steven thought of himself as a part of something. He is bitter and disappointed in the order he used to follow, disappointed in the Chantry who allows it to remain broken. 

After the Heaven burns, there is something else, something he remembers feeling a long time ago, and when the revered mother starts singing, for the first time in many years a spark of hope turns into a flame, when he sings for the boy who cannot peel potatoes right, but keeps trying when nobody expects him to.

* * *

 

Irving

Irving has always had a good memory for melodies. Combined with good hearing, it means he can recognize the mood in the tower like nobody’s business - the mages, living in quiet all their life they tend to fill it however they could, or they learn to revel in it. 

The downside is that there are those songs that get stuck in his head for hours - and always, always there’s this one apprentice who can make up a song for any occasion and it will be so damn catchy it’ll spread like a wildfire.

Apparently the Maker decided to test Irving in his old age, giving him Mer Amell, who not only made up songs, but also sung them so badly, you could never get rid of it entirely, like vermin in the cellar. 

* * *

 

Finn

He’s really not fond of the parties. He knows others envy him the freedom of going out of the tower freely, but he has a hard time understanding why. Here, among the books, with the smell of magic in the air he is not a pariah, a curiosity, a danger to steer clear of. 

Finn hates that his parents are trying their best, but in the end freedom always ends up hurting him more than the walls only the circle. He misses the music, other apprentices’ singing hardly a fair exchange, but at least here he is not a freak. 

(Also, nobody has ever thrown any red wine in his face in the Circle. He is grateful for that too.) 


	4. free

Beileag

Back in the Circle, Bei doesn’t sing often. She always loses the rhythm and it irritates her to no end, the very thought that somebody could catch her stumbling. It just wouldn’t do.

*

After the archdemon is dead and done, she gets drunk, for the very first time in her life. She never finds out what exactly happens during the second half of the night, or how exactly did they end up sleeping on cages in the kennels, but she remembers the songs, dirty and half-improvised, and voice like a foghorn, rising and falling, natural like breathing.

 

* * *

 

 

Dorian 

He used to love the dancing lessons - it is almost like the flow of magic in the battle, and sometimes he still catches himself following the steps to an old memory in the heat of the battle.

Standing over the hall in Skyhold, far away from ballrooms and old songs, watching Josie coach Herbert through basic steps he thinks he might actually want to dance again sometime.

Only if the partner is right.


End file.
